


The Noodle House

by shelter



Series: Evenings without echoes [5]
Category: Claymore (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Deployment, Duty and purpose, Food, Gen, Learning How To Be Human, One Shot Collection, Post-Series, Warrior-Human relations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 14:58:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19725985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelter/pseuds/shelter
Summary: The first thing Raftela does when she wakes up is to collect the dead bodies from the shore.





	The Noodle House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NumberA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NumberA/gifts).



> Who helped me understand how to treat my characters better.

**The Noodle House**

(Rated T for violence, disturbing imagery)

* * *

_"I doze off with a dream petting my eyeball._  
_At the same time I fear the daybreak will bury me._  
_Don't ask about me._  
_Don't ask who I am."_  
\- Ammar Tabbab

* * *

The first thing Raftela does when she wakes up is to collect the dead bodies from the shore.

Depending on the tide, sometimes there are many. Swollen corpses are buoyed by the high tide onto the muddy little beach just behind her quarters.

Sometimes, she’ll comes across just one, churning in the shallows by surging waves.

She drags them up the beach. Then she lays them in the sand under a stand of trees. She counts them, and puts the number on the wall outside in her quarters. As part of their routine, the commander of the local port garrison and his men will arrive after their morning roll-call to collect and loot the bodies. But these days, Raftela sees, they just burn them by the beach.

She doesn’t want to see their faces. She’s afraid she’ll see someone she knows from town.

* * *

The Noodle House is the third building from the fountain in a quiet square in the port town of Sinop, where Raftela has been stationed for the last two-and-a-half years. It’s near enough to the docks for Raftela to stop by when going to or returning from her duties.

Eleni, a displaced mainlander, runs the place. Officially on the menu: thick starchy laghman noodles, sometimes dough-y pastries called samsa and most of the time, kebabs. She cooks and serves, setting down food with the same phrase she gives any newcomer, “Welcome to the Noodle House.”

Not on the menu, but served anyway: ship departure information, updates about the sea and weather, news from the mainland about the ongoing war, and therapy.

Because everyone at the Noodle House falls into two types: people coming or going from the island to the mainland and ended up at the Noodle House, and Raftela.

* * *

After the commander’s men arrive, Raftela returns to her quarters, washes her hands in soap, dons her armour and sword, and heads into Sinop for duty.

She passes from the islet into the headland, where the town is sprawled out like a sleeping giant. She makes an entire circuit of the town, from end to end, before heading to the port. She looks to the ships, as the sea tosses the early morning light, churning waves filled with diamonds.

Before following the sailors into port, she stops by the Noodle House. Just behind the counter, Raftela sees Eleni standing in the same place, stirring the same pot of noodles, under the same fire, as the previous day.

“Same thing today, Raftela?”

“Yes, Eleni.”

Every day Eleni serves laghman, a family recipe exiled over the sea to the island. And every day, she gives Raftela a small bowl, the only meal a warrior like her needs the entire day.

“You know I always ask this,” Eleni says, ladling noodles into the bowl. “Anything else?”

And every day Raftela, not meeting her eyes, says no. She pays with a silver coin, like always, and touches a finger to her forehead.

Garlic, bell peppers, meat, chilies, onions, noodles. Eleni dices them so finely that they dissolve in the heat of the soup. Raftela watches her stir and stir and stir. She wonders when the soup broth was last changed.

“Whatever you’re putting in those noodles, it’s very strong,” Raftela says.

“It’s called flavour.”

“Huh. Very funny.”

“If I ate the same thing every day, I’d lose my sense of taste too.”

Just as Raftela finishes her food, a young man in backpack walks into the restaurant. He drops himself down on a chair, sweating.

Eleni goes to talk to him, and says, “Welcome to the Noodle House.” And just like everyone else, she leaves him alone. Until he wants to talk.

* * *

Like routine, Raftela heads to the port once she’s done with her meal. Once she enters the port, guarded by the commander’s men, the world intensifies.

Men cry out, selling things, selling passage, seeking passage, pleading for help. Carts with last night’s catch move through the crowd like fat toads. The smell of the sea is replaced by the briny odour of rotting fish, decomposing wood and unwashed bodies. Masts and sails of ships diffuse the sunlight into patterns of shadows on the ground. Everywhere, armed men patrol the wharves. Some heading for battle, others collecting customs revenue.

People still point and whisper behind her back. But here, she’s just another transient coming and going.

She’s walking through the port when something tickles her consciousness. She follows the faint thread of it to the furthest dock. Sure enough, the commander is there with his men. An overcrowded ship lists in the dock, surrounded by men with their shields up and spears out.

Raftela knows this can only mean one thing: refugees.

The commander waits at the main thoroughfare on a barrel at the main dock, flanked by two of his guards. Anyone disembarking from the ships at the harbour comes through him and his men search them. Mostly, Raftela just sees families fleeing from the wars on the mainland, with little or no possessions. But the commander and his men see things differently.

She observes them as they question new arrivals. They sort the families, the single young men, the businessmen who are running with their treasure. She sees the families pay bribes in wives’ earrings, and the businessmen pay theirs in gold. The young man secure their passage by agreeing to join the Commander’s men.

Human affairs. Raftela doesn’t like to interfere.

As the ships empty their human cargo, the Commander’s men corner a young lady, her veil slipping from her head. When she pushes back at them, one knees her in the side and clocks her with his weapon.

“What’s the problem?” the commander asks.

“She’s got no gold,” one of the men reply.

“She’s got her body,” another adds.

Raftela feels something stir, something in the pit of her chest. It’s like her yoki building in response to a strong emotion. Eleni calls it a conscience.

“Good enough,” goes the Commander.

One of the men seizes the lady by her shoulder, the other takes her by the arm. The lady – no the girl – looks around, anywhere, hurling her eyes in her direction.

"Stop," Raftela says.

Everyone pauses, looks to her. The commander turns. She feels awkwardly powerful for causing this reaction in everyone present.

“I’ll pay the port fee.” Raftela drops several gold coins in front of the Commander’s men. It’s probably worth several days’ of meals.

The commander sighs, flicks a wrist. The men release the girl, who runs straight to Raftela’s side. She grips Raftela’s sword arm, kissing it multiple times.

“Uhhh,” Raftela says. “Do you like noodles?”

* * *

At four in the afternoon, after most of the day’s action over, Raftela returns to the Noodle House. The square is alive with refugees and men she knows are people smugglers. The differences are obvious: the refugees walking with the slow, swinging gait of nowhere to go, and the smugglers with the determined look of seeking and locating finding easy prey.

She knows many smugglers fill the commander’s pockets with bribes so they can operate freely. Seeing them convince gullible refugees twists her stomach into a knot of uncertainty. She may be a warrior. But there’s nothing she can do – without incurring the commander’s wrath.

So, she makes sure none of them enter the Noodle House.

In the Noodle House, Eleni has taken the girl she saved in the morning under her wing. They communicate in a clipped dialect that Raftela can’t identify, Eleni serving and the girl helping with customers. In between dicing garlic, the Eleni tells Raftela that the girl’s name is Nessrin.

“Welcome to the Noodle House.”

The young man with the backpack earlier is Ilham, a mainland transplant from the south. Over a bowl of laghman he tells Eleni that he’s trying to return to the mainland to find his sweetheart.

“Where are you from, brother?” Eleni asks.

“Fuah, near Temptation Bay.”

“Word is there’s fighting there.”

“I don’t care,” he says.

“I need to return.”

To Raftela, the mainland is a forbidding shadow, a place only known for suffering, the origin of all her pain. It’s a byword for chaos and treachery, reserved for Phantom Miria’s ire and Audrey’s suspicion. She doesn’t know why the refugees are obsessed by it.

But she understands their determination, their attachment to something so deep and intense it surpasses all common sense.

“I came to this island to earn enough gold, so that me and my sweetheart and could relocate here,” Ilham says. “But he doesn’t answer my letters. So now I’m going back to find out why.”

“Ah young love,” says a listener.

“If I find him and make it back, you all are invited to my wedding!”

“Find a priest who’ll be willing to witness your vows first!”

“I hear the priests of Rabona will do anything for gold!” someone else says.

“And you,” Eleni says, nodding to Nessrin. “What’s your story, sister?”

Nessrin speaks, and Eleni narrates in the local tongue. She tells of a war, so continuous that it never occurred to her it would come to her village. But when it did, it took everything.

“They killed my fathers and brothers, took my mothers and sisters,” she says.

Then, escape. Walking three days and three nights to the coast. Leaving those wounded and unable to go on on desolate ridges. Bribing sailors to take them to the island.

“The worst thing were the –” The pause. Nessrin’s eyes drop, then they fly to Raftela.

Raftela’s seen this before. This confusion laced with both thankfulness of a safe haven and fear of the who she is and what she carries.

“There are no monsters here,” Raftela says.

“At least not while she’s around,” Eleni adds.

In the break before Nessrin can speak, more customers arrive. Raftela watches them, makes sure they’re not smugglers hustling for easy business among the refugee clientele. And Eleni goes to prepare more noodles and soup.

“Welcome to the Noodle House,” she says.

* * *

Raftela sometimes dreams. In her quarters, the lullaby of gently crashing waves singing through the night, she dreams of ruined castles deep in the interior. Fields of wheat. Birds singing above flushing streams. A royal city draped in gold and purple banners.

The problem is, she’s been in so many warriors’ minds she can’t tell if these dreams are hers or another’s.

The last warrior’s yoki she’d synchronised so intensely with was Miria. So, she sometimes dreams the deep memory that the elder warrior cherishes the most: a moonlit cave, overlooking a mountain valley drenched in snow, with another warrior with a long ponytail who Raftela doesn’t know, moving aside as if pulling back from a kiss.

In Raftela’s version of the dream, the other warrior is Nessrin, who’s kissing her sword hand. The younger girl is trying to tell her something, but Raftela can’t understand. There’s no mountain valley. Instead, the rocks are a headland, the wind is a hurricane, and Raftela’s face is encrusted with salt and sea spray. The warrior-who-looks-like-Nessrin’s eyes turn yellow –

She wakes in the midst of a storm. The trees outside are waving, branches akimbo. Raftela sees the first light of dawn breaking, and she tries not to imagine the bodies strewn across the beach.

* * *

The commander summons her to the docks. She obeys. Not because she fears or respects him, but because Audrey’s original orders to her were, “Work with the humans and help them when necessary.”

The storm has tired itself out with its tantrum last night. She skips her morning meal at the Noodle House, and enters the messy port, still recovering from the night’s storm. An armada of smashed wood chokes the port’s entrance, flotsam from shipwrecks. For one brief horrible second, Raftela sees bodies, not pale planks.

At the very end of the port, where usually the refugee ships from the mainland wait, Raftela finds a crowded boat, clearly listing, but filled to the brim with people.

“Silver-eyed warrior,” the commander says by way of greeting.

“That ship is sinking.”

“I’m not letting anyone set foot on our island until you can confirm there’re no monsters on that boat.”

Raftela blinks. She looks at the tired, sunburnt faces, the women clinging onto the sides of the ship, the torn sails. She sees every single face, looking for the faintest signal –

“You should let them go.”

“That’s my job,” he says. “Do yours.”

“They’re fine.” The men look at them. Raftela waits in a spot of sunshine, wind lifting the edges of her tunic, as the commander plays with the hilt of his sword.

When he finally relents, his men roll out a plank that bridges the ship to the dock. In the mad rush of refugees coming ashore, the commander orders his men to control the crowd, at swordpoint.

“Commander.”

“You’re not needed anymore, Raftela.” She flinches at him saying her name. She doesn't like it when someone says her name.

Children jump from ship to dock and land in the water. She sees those who make it on land getting beaten.

“Dismissed,” the commander says. When his men arm their shields, Raftela knows there’s nothing she can do. For the first time in her life, she retreats.

* * *

“Try to make friends, ok?” Audrey told her, on the day she left.

She had lived among human men for most of her life as a warrior. Once she achieved that coveted Number 10 rank, her handlers trained her differently, separated her from the usual rank-and-file. She didn't socialise, go on hunts or talk to her sisters. She was stationed in Staff, where the men made decisions in the corridors that sent hundreds young women to a lifetime of suffering.

On nights when the sea melts into a blurry smear of movement, she thinks, I'm used to this. Used to being apart. Used to doing what men want her to do. Used to fulfilling men's dark and sometimes violent desires against women.

“You do know what friends are, right?” went Audrey.

The last days of the Organisation were - difficult. She understands it like this: her one and only defiant act of not attacking Miria, helped to destroy her entire world. By refusing to twist a rebel's mind, she fell from a world ruled by men's desires into a shaky sisterhood of warriors, a world without men.

“What do you think I am?”

“Sorry. Just joking around.”

On that foggy autumn morning, only two people came to send her off. Audrey, as marshall of the Claymore high command, was there with her written orders and letters for the commander of Sinop. Then there was Miria, who had walked for two hours from the surrounding hills.

"How did you know?"

“You told me when you brought me home with Yuma. Remember?” Miria said.

Did she? She couldn't.

She ended up asking Miria why she came to see her off.

“You helped me to cope, purify my mind.”

Back then, she didn't know what to say. She felt nervous leaving the city of her sisters, but also strangely untethered and free.

“I could feel you in my mind on some days, a benevolent presence,” Miria said.

“You know I almost killed you in Staff.”

“That was a different time. In a different situation.”

She said goodbye to Audrey and shouldered a small bag of all she owned. But Miria followed her all the way out of the north gate, until the fork in the road back to her village.

“Goodbye and Godspeed. Stay alive,” Miria said, following up with the traditional farewell: “I look forward to the day I see your face again.”

It was the nicest thing a fellow warrior had ever said to her.

* * *

With her mind is still buzzing with the residue of last night’s dream and scenes of refugees being shepherded like cattle as the commander’s men bark orders, she finds herself back at the Noodle House, in a corner table, far from the door.

She watches the shadow of the sun crawl from one end the restaurant to another. No one talks to her. The place fills up. Deep down, she feels a flicker of recognition, her sensitivity to yoki igniting, triggered by a sense of helplessness.

“Are you all right, dear?”

Out of nowhere, Eleni. She rushes in and out of her view, busy with both the restaurant and new arrivals. A short time later, Raftela sees her discussing something with Ilham.

Then, Ilham serves her laghman.

“Eat, sister. You look like hell.”

Her first mouthful is dew-washed herbs, writhing worms of starchy noodles and meat seeped in a sauce so powerful it floods her senses. With each slurp, the Noodle House comes into focus. First, how close Ilham is standing over her. Then, the exact placement of chairs, tables and people. And last of all, the din of dinner in progress.

“That’s better,” says Ilham. “You were looking pale.”

“I couldn’t help them,” is all Raftela says.

“You can’t help everyone,” he replies sagely. Only now does Raftela appreciate the strange tilt of his accent, prolonging some words. “If you could, then you aren’t human.”

Eleni’s voice continues: “Welcome to the Noodle House.”

Soon, a pack of new arrivals and old-timers surround her and Ilham. Some of them are from the listing ship that Raftela saw earlier. She tries not to look at their bruises. But they’re curious about her – and busy sharing their stories.

One has no idea what laghman is. He still consumes two bowls, and between heaps of dill and meat he talks about the war.

“We were in the district capital. It was safe, with plenty of food. Then, one night we heard an army was approaching. There were catapults. And boom! Next thing I knew, I was digging out my grandparents from under their own home with my fingers.”

He speaks in a language that Raftela finds almost incomprehensible. But the ten bloody crescents of what remains of his fingernails tells her what language cannot.

Another, a lady, can customise her laghman so well that Eleni just gives up. Her hands are pale stars, her eyes look immaculate underlined with kohl, and already other men are saying in the Sinop dialect that she’s a prostitute plying her trade.

But she says, “They took everything from me.”

“What do you mean, sister?”

“The war took my lovers. The monsters took my home. The sea took my sisters. And when I reached here, those thugs at the docks took all my gold.” She takes slow sips of her soup, letting a dramatic pause sit on her listeners before she addresses Raftela.

“When those thugs saw me they would’ve taken more,” she says. “But you were at the docks. And they were afraid you would stop them. So they let me go.”

“But –”

Before Raftela can respond, a commotion breaks out from the other side of the restaurant. Raftela sees Eleni stopping armed men from crossing the threshold into the Noodle House. Somehow in the thick of it, there’s Nessrin. Raftela gets up and strides to Eleni. She’s about to draw her Claymore when the armed men, the commander’s men, see her and leave. Eleni looks angry, and Nessrin, just embarrassed.

“You better learn,” she hears Eleni tell Nessrin, “there are worse monsters in this town than yoma.”

* * *

That night, the sea is so still and peaceful it resembles a pond. And Raftela has recurring dreams of being confronted by crowds. At first, handlers from Staff surrounding her as they flee the warriors’ rebellion. Later, humans in Rabona and Sinop, asking for something she can’t give.

She wakes in the night, her yoki flaring. She gets up so fast she has a headache.

Outside, the high tide shuffles across the sand, rendering the moon a jagged splash on the water. Across the bay, at the opposite headland, Sinop rests, darkened, only lit with tiny pinpricks of light from garrison towers or returing fisherman.

As her eyes adjust to the night, she sees the distant blurring of light.

She looks again: it’s not low tide and the moon is not a moon. Instead, the water is crashing across her beach in furious white curtains. Instead, the moon is actually a ship, halted unusually close to shore, the entire vessel alive with light.

She grabs her Claymore and jogs down the beach, waves chasing after her. As she approaches Sinop she sees that the town is awake. Even from afar, she makes out people are by the shore and congregating in the port. She’s never seen anything like this before.

Just outside the town gates she asks some guardsmen what’s going on.

“A ship has raised the sick flag,” he says.

“There’s yoma on board.”

“Is that confirmed?”

“The commander has ordered us to sink it.” Raftela looks to the sea. The ship’s waiting, perhaps a kilometre offshore, at the quarantine distance. Its torches are aflame, and the tiny dots of men are on the deck. It has all the markings of a vessel fleeing war. Above, a unmistakable yellow pennant hangs from its mast.

She widens her yoki and tries to detect something, anything in return. Something comes up, but it’s too faint for her to be certain.

“Sinking a ship without inspecting it is not right,” she says.

“Tell that to the commander.”

Raftela runs to Sinop, past the gates and the crowds moving to see the spectacle. Harpoons and ballistae are being towed to the coast, and tar and pitch are lit. Several arches jostle her before she can reach the commander, presiding over the operation.

“Let them dock,” she tells him. “Even if there’s yoma on board, I can deal with it.”

“It is a sick ship,” he says. “Not on my watch are they bringing disease to our island.”

“It’s a refugee ship.”

“We protect our own.”

“I can handle whatever’s on board. If I can prove it will you let them through?”

“If you can prove it.” She looks at the men and their weapons. The harpoons are coiled and the fires are burning, eager for arrows to be lit. Out at sea, the ship rocks, unsteady against the waves.

“Get me a ship,” she orders.

When no one obeys, Raftela pulls off her armour and jumps into the water.

* * *

She’s almost within throwing distance of the vessel when she realises she hasn’t fully planned this through. What if the ship is full of diseased refugees? What if they panic when she boards? What if there’s actually yoma on board?

As her arms turn sore from swimming, she sees the ship at the very top of the crest of a wave, as if she’s looking at the summit of a mountain. The tide carries her towards the hull and for brief moment, she tumbles, the sea becoming sky and the sky turning to water. She reaches out an arm and takes the long chain of the anchor.

“Man overboard!” someone shouts.

She hauls herself out of the water. Hands seize her and drag into the cool of the pre-dawn air. Her ears, once full with the ocean, register the beating of sails, the astonishment of men.

They keep her steady, but she folds beneath them, the weight of the Claymore strapped to her back tipping her over. Crew and passengers swarm her.

“You swam all the way out from the port,” one of them says.

“Is there – sickness – on this ship?”

“The watery lungs. Many of us have watery lungs from being out at sea.”

“Yoma?”

“See for yourself.”

She unleashes her yoki for the first time in years. The water on her skin heats up, evaporates. When she looks at the crowd she can see the inner workings on flesh, muscle and vein. When she sees something that’s not human, she focuses everything she can on her target.

“You hid really well,” she says. “Now come out and fight me.”

The yoma, or whatever it is, barges through the crowd, fangs drawn. Raftela doesn’t see the attack coming. Instead, she sees a village on the mainland, a man taken by armies, cut into pieces and reassembled again with monster flesh. She sees longing, hunger, hopes and desire. She sees a vision of a ship, of the sea, of escape in an island, a port town waiting across the waves. Until a silver-eyed warrior clambered on board.

When she grounds herself in the real world, on the buckling ship, she sees the yoma face-to-face. He’s still half-human. She looks at him, attempting to undo the power of her yoki synchronising – the twitching eye, the veins popping, the nosebleed – and being no match for Raftela’s raw power.

Raftela doesn’t even have to draw her sword. She just stares and the yoma, and says: “Your journey ends here.”

The half-man, half-yoma stands upright and hurls himself overboard.

Everyone stands back, giving her a wide berth. She looks at them, and orders the crew to hoist a friendly flag.

That’s when the first harpoon hits.

* * *

All Raftela remembers is the mast shattering and the entire deck crumbling like dust. She falls through a confusion of debris, a gauntlet of agony. Her vision succumbs to water.

The knife-edged waves roll her and she attempts to open her eyes, only to see an avalanche of wreckage careening towards her. Wood screams and splinters. Then, both her eyes and ears go out again.

* * *

“There in the water!”

The very tip of her right ear burns. The moment she understands that sensation as pain something – the waves, the surf, the ocean – rolls her under, only to chuck her on a hundred points of smaller pain.

Her ears ring, and then she hears voices echoing as if through water. All her senses flood back to her at once: her face in the sand, the waves shredding at her sides, the heat of the sun wafting over her wet skin, foul seawater on her tongue.

She looks up, letting quartz and shells fall from her line of sight. She sees the waterline choked with debris and bodies three men deep. Some are squirming. Many are not. She sees the trees by the waterline. She sees her house.

“There she is.”

Before she can see anything else, human bodies surround her. They say her name. Over and over again. She doesn’t have any energy to flinch. They call out to her, press their faces on her shoulder, weep over her. When someone makes a command, they crowd lifts her up. She wants to say she can walk. But they kiss the sides of her mouth and stroke her forehead. They lay her down on leafy branches.

The sun is in her eyes and Raftela can feel much of her body below her waist. But she can make out Eleni, Ilham and a dozen other familiar faces from the Noodle House. A fierce spark of frustration at not being able to do anything when the ship sank consumes her, and despite herself, for the second time in her life, she begins to cry.

“Shh. Raftela,” says a voice. When she turns, she sees Nessrin pressing her forehead to hers. “You’re safe now.”

* * *

Later, when she can walk again, Raftela goes out to the breakwaters that encircle Sinop’s harbour. She lets the ocean wind soothe her sore skin, as she watches the ships creep out of the port.

Out at sea, the war continues. Ships with refugees still arrive in the dead of night. The commander still holds sway over the port town – although they both know, after the incident with the ship that nearly killed her, Raftela will have to confront him soon.

Worse of all, bodies from failed voyages still wash up at the beach where she lives.

The world is still in chaos. And she’s still at the frontline of a possible new war. Nothing changes.

She stares at the unkempt surface of the sea. White breakers crashing, everything else dark. She stares at it until she can hear her heart's rapid tapping match with the hiss of receding waves.

But now, when she finds herself at the mercy of her thoughts, she returns to the familiar warmth of the Noodle House. Eleni will be there, stirring the pot. Ilham will be regaling diners with his tales of the Mainland, trying to raise enough gold to return. And Nessrin will be there to serve her the usual: a small bowl of laghman, with a sprig of parsley, a dashing of dill and the only greeting she looks forward to hear.

“Welcome to the Noodle House.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you've reached this point, thank you for reading!
> 
> This short story was originally called "The Lighthouse". It has been in constant edit & revision since 2016.
> 
> It references an event in "Though the Heavens Fall", another fic I wrote. But I've written it in a way that the exact nature of the event doesn't matter.
> 
> Again, following NumberA's feedback to me in 2016, I revised the story, and tried to focus on telling something more humane. I took away all the unnecessary violence and suffering, while trying to be faithful to the central message of isolation. Raftela is a character I really wanted to explore, and this is my take on her interactions with humans & fellow warriors as a Claymore that' essentially policing other warriors. 
> 
> It's not perfect, and sometimes I think the references to refugees are either too dated or too relevant. But finally putting this story up takes a great burden off my back.
> 
> Questions for feedback, so I can improve:
> 
> _(a) What other character traits would you assign to Raftela?_  
>  _(b) What did you think of the ending? (Too sudden? Too hopeful? Too sad?)_
> 
> Shorter, less dark stories to come.


End file.
